you possess the Dark Thorn, the weapon of the Unfettered Knight,” Philip’s advisor observed. “How did you come by the staff? I was under the impression it was meant for the boy, not you. Not you at all.”
Richard wanted to laugh. “Just lucky, I guess.”
“Did the wizard err, I wonder?” John Lewis Hugo said.
“Hasn’t he always.”
“Killing your wife the way you did, killing the love of your life with the sword carried by Lancelot, arguably one of the most romantic and heroic men history has ever recorded,” John Lewis Hugo prodded, grinning. “Poetic tragedy, would you not agree? Even the wizard would agree in his own false sense of irony.” “I didn’t know it was her,” Richard said, mostly to himself.
John Lewis Hugo stared hard at Richard. Memories from a day long gone but all too fresh stabbed the knight’s chest. A korrigan similar to the one that lay dead on the cold dungeon floor had slipped by him. It had taken him hours to track it down to just outside of the apartment building where he lived with Elizabeth. Sneaking upon the creature with the lethal calm the knight had embraced, he slew it with Arondight before anyone on the street had an inkling of what had happened. Before incinerating the small korrigan to ash as was his custom, he knelt to watch the embers of life dim unto death.
But as he watched, the features of the fey creature melted away, revealing a human woman beneath. Panic seized him, tearing at his heart. Nothing would be as it had been. The glamour that had fooled him dissolved completely.
It was not a fey creature Richard had run Arondight through.
It had been Elizabeth.
“That is the problem I have with your world,” John Lewis Hugo drawled. “Its degradation. Its unaware peoples. Its lack of moral compass. You did not know because you killed first to ask questions later. Wisdom has never been successful in such ways.”
“What do you know of wisdom?” Richard growled.
“You are at the heart of that wisdom, puppet.”
“You intend to invade Seattle then,” Richard said, hanging his head. “I have seen your army. I have seen the desire written on you.”
“That I will not tell you. You will discover quite soon enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“You will either join the king in his efforts and lead his army with the Dark Thorn at its head, relinquish it to my authority, or be ultimately destroyed by years of torture,” John Lewis Hugo said. “I hope for the second of course.”
“Kill me then,” Richard offered. “I will not help him or you.”
John Lewis Hugo frowned, only one side of his face moving. He then turned and grabbed from the shadowy alcove one of the leather packs, bringing it into the light. Liquid sloshed within and John Lewis Hugo made sure it did so.
“Those things are blasphemous!” Richard said.
“No! They are providence!” John Lewis Hugo shot back, nodding to the Fomorian. “They are the means to end the sin that has populated your world since my leaving!”
The Fomorian pulled on a massive chain behind him that led into the ceiling. A hidden mechanism running in the walls pulled the chains binding Richard taut, splaying him wide open.
“The Holy Grail was never intended for destruction!” Richard yelled. “The Word would neve—”
“What written Word have you read, Sir Knight?” John Lewis Hugo drawled. “The Word punishes the wicked. It has ever been so. He lends His power to those who possess His truest intentions. Your world has become a rotten egg, now split open and spewing its putrid ilk upon innocence and virtue. The Graal will wash away those who have become an evil on the world.”
“You are screwing with powers you cannot even possibly comprehend, let alone control, you ass,” Richard spat. “The Grail has never been a tool of conquest.”
“Not for humans, no.”
A sinking feeling overcame the knight, one he could not ignore and knew to be suddenly true.
“No,” Richard whispered disbelievingly.
“Yes.”
John Lewis Hugo stepped in front of him, his face a cold, twisted mess. The knight looked into the heart of the black eye that sat in the malformed remains of his enemy’s face, and a red light blossomed to expand into an iris of inferno. Long interred malevolence stared, holding him fast, showing him the truth; it was a sinister intelligence far older and much greater in scope than any man could possess, even having lived eight centuries. The smell of rotting mulch, mushrooms, and old death embraced Richard.
John Lewis Hugo